The Pierre Trudeau Home Page

The Pierre Trudeau Home PageFormer Prime Minister of Canada

As a former Canadian prime minister, Pierre Elliott Trudeau was a flamboyant and charismatic political giant who led the country through some of the most tumultuous events and passionate politics in the history of Canada.

From the Official Languages Act in 1969, to the October Crisis in 1970, the 1980 referendum and the patriation of the Constitution in 1982, Trudeau dominated Canada's political landscape like few others.

Pierre Trudeau Biographies - Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau was first elected Canada's prime minister in 1968. He remained in power over the following 16 years until 1979.

He wore sandals in the Canada's House of Commons, dated celebrities such as Barbara Streisand, Kim Cattrall, Liona Boyd, and Margot Kidder, occasionally used obscenities to insult his opponents, and one time, Pierre Trudeau did a pirouette behind the back of Queen Elizabeth II. As prime minister, Trudeau patriated the Canadian Constitution from the British Parliament to Canada and incorporated in it the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The influence of Trudeau's policies
and actions in Canada is still strong and very evident in Canadian politics today. Pierre Trudeau's status as a political giant in Canadian history is indisputable.

Born in Montreal, Quebec, Pierre Trudeau was a flamboyant and charismatic intellectual. He attended Harvard University and the London School of Economics. A clever (some would say "cunning") politician, he led Canada through some of its most tumultuous times. He was often controversial.

As prime minister, Trudeau espoused participatory democracy as a means of making Canada a "Just Society." His desire for greater citizen involvement in government appears to have been frustrated by lack of support within his party, and he later opposed greater involvement for citizens in representative democracy. He vigorously defended the newly implemented universal health care and regional development programs as means of making society more just.

Trudeau's final term in office was significant for the federalist victory in the first Quebec referendum on independence (called by Parti Québécois premier René Lévesque) and Trudeau's successful attempts to patriate the Canadian constitution and add a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, his most enduring legacy. Quebec refused to agree to the new constitution, the source of continued acrimony between Quebec City and Ottawa.

On February 29, 1984, after taking a famous "long walk in the snow" Trudeau decided to step down as prime minister, ending his 16-year rule of Canada.

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